STUDY MATERIAL FOR B.

A ENGLISH
SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE
SEMESTER - VI, ACADEMIC YEAR 2020 - 21

UNIT - II
MARTAND BY NAYANTARA SAHGAL
Nayantara sahgal’s short story “Martand” is essentially about love and loss at a time of
intense political crisis. The protagonist, who is never named, is a woman who finds herself caught
up in a triangular relationship with her husband Naresh, a civil servant, on the one hand, and a
doctor, Martand, on the other. The love story is a poignant one. When the useful doctor Martand
comes into the scene and gives the readers a glimpse of eternal love triangle that was soon to be
formed or almost formed, it gives to the reader a feeling of apathy towards the woman protagonist.

One can understand the purity amidst which the temple was situated. The reference to the
warmth that she has felt on touc hing its stones is the spiritual warmth of fulfillment that has been
absent from her life only to be substituted by the crude physical love between herself and her
husband. The reference to this and then the mention of Martand corresponds to show the spiritual
affinity that both possses for each other, as if in accordance with the laws of nature. The
relationship is not a clandestine affair but is magnified into a destined culmination, celestial and pre-
ordained in nature much like the location of Martand in the purity encased landscape.

The sexual intercourse in the “Martand” shrine helps to conceive, not a baby, but a new
character of the story, a living Sun God, full of ruined splendor, descending from an ancient, princely
lineage. As Sahgal herself puts it, the protagonist, gets a shock of recognition and betrayal. In a few
deft strokes, sahgal successfully portrays the agency of a divided heart as also the beauty of the
feeling of love itself. But the singular feature for which “Martand” stands out is the way in which it
retalls the Partition story from the official point of view. The focus of the story is not the millions of
refugess who were displaced by Partition, but the Government officers who had to deal with them.
And “Martand” very effectively conveys their helplessness when faced with this unprecedented
crisis and their untold sacrifices. During the course of the story, the woman claims herself tobe
childless and says that once Naresh and she had visited the temple of the Sun God, Martand in
Kashmir.

Nayantara Sahgal does not allow her protagonist in “Martand” to speak out her heart. She
just seems to flicker between her fidelity to her husband and an irrespressible heartache for the
other man, the doctor, who is committed to alleviating human pain. There was that untouched
innocence about martand, a purity without which she could no longer live. There was so little time
to talk about personal problems, and when they were alone, they did not talk.

The end of the story drives an almost sado-masochistic stance to qualify the wife who is left
stranded in emotional void with no hope for any fulfillment in the duration of her existence. The
death of Martand by the tyranny of his own makers an end to all humanism, shattering the hearts of
both the wife and Martand. The fateful occurrence of such a doleful incident at a time when truth
was to be fold to Naresh opens immense scope of pondering on the entire situation.

THE SINS OF THE MOTHER by Jamal Ahmad

The story is set in Balochistan, evoking desert tands and harsh weather. The man and his
wife are from an area called Goth Siahpad, a placewith a very small population in Pakistan’s South
Western province, and it is the location that lends the story its culture. It is hard to tell whether the
story stereotypes a version of the Balochi tribal life, or if it is a true account of how things actually

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 STUDY MATERIAL FOR B.A ENGLISH
SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE
SEMESTER - VI, ACADEMIC YEAR 2020 - 21

stand. We have soldiers and forts and old tribal traditions. We have camels and harsh winds and
men who stone others to death. All of these things evoke a particular feeling, an idea of a place
where people worry about things very different to the ones that readers living in huge metropolitan
cities worry about. And yet, at its heart it is a story of survival, of a family struggling, against the
odds, to survive. In terms of relevance, this piece of fiction can survive for ever.

Somewhere on an outposting surrounded onall sides by dirt and nothingness, a man turns up
with a young woman in tow. Both are dirty, exhausted and close to dying. They hav a camel
straggling alone besides them and they are barely holding themselves together. Their first request
for shelter from the soldiers stationed there is refused quite bluntly, but an earnest request for
refuge is finally needed. The couple retreat to a small room to the side of the fort, locking
themselves away. And so, as they start emerging slowly from their rooms, the man bringing water
for the slodiers on his camel and the woman weaving gift baskets from thorn shrubs, the couple
slowly become a parts of the settlement.

Things change when the couple start expecting a child. In an area dominated by men and a
harsh, unforgiving climate, the child is a breath of fresh air. He is fed on army rations and follow
soldiers on their patrols. At night, he curls into his mother’s lap and dreams big dreams. But it is too
good to last. They are a couple, who have left a dangerous past behind them, and it is bound to
catch up to them. Very soon, a lovely figure on a camel arrives, heralding bad times ahead. And it is
here that our story starts revealing the background, propelling the man and his family on another
desperate run for their lives.

The implied romance between the couple work in subtle ways. It is worth nothing the
implications of the adulterous nature of our two protagonists and how that might affect our
perception of them. But the story skews our sympathies for them rather than against them. It is in
this couple that we must keep our faith. Possible one of the most interesting aspects of the story is
the lack of names. From the soldiers to the subedar and from the child to the sardar, there are no
proper nouns used for any of the characters, except for the female protagoinst. Even her lover, the
man with whom she is one the run, is introduced in relation to her. This is quite interesting in terms
of gender representation in a story. A writer does not use particular words without a reason, than
the reasoning behind such a blatant lack of names besides Gul Bibi’s becomes quite a point of
curiosity.

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